Page:Chinese Fables and Folk Stories.djvu/154

150 rice bird, "Why did my children follow your call and not mine? How did you teach them in one breath what I have not been able to teach them in all their lives?"

And the rice-bird father said, "They are not your children. They belong to the rice-bird mother. She is coming now; see for yourself."

Soon sixteen rice birds flew near and the eagle mother saw that they were all like her children. The rice bird said, "You see, it is as I told you."

"But they must be my children," said the eagle mother. "I can not understand this, for I never had children like them before. My other children were like me and they never behaved in this way. But I will take them home again and feed them, and when they grow older they may become like me and the others of my family."

"It will never be so," said the rice bird. "I am sure of that. You need not hope that these children will ever be eagles. You see they do not eat meat, they eat rice. They know the rice bird's call without being taught. They do not speak the same dialect that you speak, nor sing the same songs. They are surely rice birds and you can not keep them longer in your home."

The eagle mother tried again and again to call her children and they only said, "Chic, chic," which meant